Archive

What went wrong? That’s the question all political commentators, campaign strategists and journalists are asking these days in the fallout leading from the 2016 elections.

Strategy first! Whether you are talking about video marketing, content marketing, or about a political campaign, it has to start with clear strategy (don’t confuse strategy with tactics, strategy is usually ONE, and tactics can be multiple).

1. Identify Your Audience

Who is your audience, what are their problems, what keeps them awake at night and how you (your business, your product or service) can solve their problems?

It’s similar with political parties, they have to identify their audiences and their problems and then shape their messages accordingly.

“Many brands make the mistake of producing marketing videos designed to target every audience, thinking that by creating video content that appeals to greater numbers of viewers, thy’ll get greater leads and sales!“

Often there are many different audiences and each one of them requires a different approach, different tactics and different messages.
So, identify your audience(s) and develop personas. Without knowing your audiences you won’t be able to identify their problems, so it’d be hard to develop a meaningful message that would resonate with them.

2. Have a Clear Message – Be Specific!

Your message might be fit for your audience, but is it specific enough. Make your message clear and easily understood – and do this quickly.

“Having a video (or other content) that conveys one main message is essential to ensure your viewers have a clear understanding.”

Your message has to resonate with your audience, they need to know from your message that you feel their pain, in business (you might have problem of getting leads, or poor conversion…) in politics (they don’t want to pay more for doctor visits or scans, or they are underemployed…).

What exactly do you want your video campaign to achieve? Does the resulting video aim to increase brand awareness? Increase leads and sales? By how much? What specific numbers? ‘’Grow your audience with social media’’ will get you nowhere, but “Increase the traffic to your website with Facebook Ads” is specific.

3. Tell a Story – (vs telling your slogans or a tagline)

“Jobs & Growth”, or “People First” means nothing if there is no story to support it.

Everyone loves a good story. Stories delight, motivate, challenge, anger and touch us.
Voters don’t have time to read through pages of data about your policies. They simply want to get a feel for who you are as a person and know that you can be trusted to do a good job for them. Identifying a few key story points to tell in your campaign is the best way to gain their trust, help them develop a feel for what you’re all about.

Slogans can only be effective if there is a story behind them. They need to know your story, then following up with your slogan won’t be a problem – they now know what you mean.

So, don’t assume that your potential customers know what your tag line stands for or your slogan, they need to know the full story; who you are, what you stand for, tell them a story how your product or service have solved the problem for your existing clients etc…

Video’s been huge in recent years, from YouTube’s cats & dogs, branded videos, Facebook’s native videos and of course, no surprise that video is a big weapon used in politics and elections more than ever.

When the government released (obviously rushed) their latest video ad, media both online and offline attacked it as being fake and nicknamed it #FakeTradie Video Ad.

So, if you are a business owner or a marketing / advertising professional, I highlighted a few points, few critical errors that can serve as video marketing lessons to brands, both businesses and organisations, lessons that can be very useful when you approach your next video marketing project.

1. MAINTAINING or ESTABLISHING TRUST

Trust is crucial when it comes to both politics and business, you’d agree.
It’d be hard to find two areas of life where trust would be more important, yet again and again we are witnesses of both brands and political parties playing with TRUST – a commodity that is so hard to gain and so easily to squander.

Commentators and media have been very critical of a few different points in this video (you can watch the video ad just below); authenticity – ceramic mug, silver bracelet, watch… they all don’t have the place in a workplace and environment this trade is supposedly a part of.

Online videos have a big advantage over other marketing content: the human touch it brings to brands. When real people appear in your video it gains the trust of your users and, with competition growing between brands in almost every online niche, this trust can make all the difference.

2. OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY in YOUR VIDEO

“He wears high-vis and sits next to a saw.” – questions asked by many journalists and social media commentators. (This point can also go under the TRUST issue.)

When planing or producing your videos, it’s very important to observe any occupational health and safety issues that might arise.
Your video producer might not be aware of any OH & S requirements in your workplace, but a good one will definitely remind you to observe any potential OH & S requirements during the pre production or planing stage.

“Last thing you want is to complete your video, upload it… and after all this hard work only to realise that your worker should not be sitting next to a saw, for example!“

3. CLEAR MESSAGE

One of 3 starting points when embarking on a video marketing journey and creating a video(s) for you brand is your Message (the other two are your video’s Purpose and your Audience).

Some commentators criticised video’s confused message and its inconsistency with the campaign. I’m not going to be a judge on that, I’m not a political commentator, I guess it can be argued that the ad has focussed on a specific, very targeted audience and that the message was delivered in a language that is familiar to that audience.

Still, your video should not attempt to cover more than one main message.
Having a video that conveys ONE main message is essential to ensure your viewers have a clear understanding.

If you’ve got to say more, make another video. In terms of content marketing and also SEO, it makes a perfect sense to produce multiple videos, or video series.

“Having a video that conveys one main message is essential to ensure your viewers have a clear understanding.”

4. TELL YOUR STORY – Don’t READ Your Story!

There were numerous calls about presenter (yes, he is a real tradie) waffling, obviously reading from a teleprompter.

For this type of video, again, where trust and authenticity is crucial, you cannot afford to have narration that is not perfect.
Talking down the barrel, straight to camera, can be challenging for most people and if you are not trained actor or a seasoned presenter, you are going to struggle.

This is one of the most important things to get right if you are attempting to make a video in a “storytelling style” – your talent (whether real or hired) has to be persuasive on camera.

Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to make a video and connect to your audience because people crave the emotional and powerful connection that comes through telling a story.

5. DO YOUR HOMEWORK – PLAN in DETAILS

Planing and Pre-Production stage are very important, alongside the strategy which comes first.
So, once you have set your strategy and you know which type of video you are going to produce, do your homework, plan thoroughly.

Little things like a wrong tea cup, a bracelet on your hand, or big ones like “sitting next to a saw” can ruin all your hard work and of course require a reshoot which may be very costly.

Do your homework, plan meticulously, preview the video before an approval. Some mistakes can be spotted in the editing stage and require a reshoot, but even that can cost you extra, at least you haven’t released a video that will hurt your brand.
That’d be way more costly!

Please leave a comment or shoot us a question about your next video project.

Video4Marketing blog is powered by VideoVault your local video production studio.

Business owners face additional challenges when maintaining online safety and security and safety and security of their business premises during the holiday season.

The following topics are of specific interest to business owners:

Protecting your business premises

Secure your computers and hard drives

Back-up your data

Protecting Your Business Premises

Protecting your business means not only protecting your personal livelihood, but also the livelihood of employees and the interest of your customers – a lot of people may be affected by a breach of security.

Keeping Your Business Data Safe

In the wake of the recent string of corporate data breaches, businesses are more alert than ever about cyber-security. Right now, many of them are also in the midst of the busy busy holiday shopping season, which brings more opportunities for hackers to break in and steal sensitive customer data or intellectual property.

Rod Deacon from Evongo explains the importance of leveraging technology to drive your business further, and points out to the fact that last thing that any business needs is a lost productivity due to technical problems.

Like this:

Whether Geelong’s $37,000 “tourism movie” featuring Mayor Darryn Lyons is an “insult to all of us” as judged by independent marketing experts, journos and our local MPs or a “cut through, be different, and change the perception of the city” as Mr Roger Grant and Mayor Darryn Lions stated, is the major topic that occupied media since the release of the video.

The far important issue for me is the questionable (if existent at all) VIDEO MARKETING STRATEGY and overall marketing strategy for Tourism Greater Geelong and The Bellarine.

If basic rules of any video marketing strategy are to answer the following questions, then how did we end up with these zombies!?

PURPOSE or OBJECTIVE > Determine what your video will accomplish (and for whom).

AUDIENCE> Exactly who you are making this content for? (This hides one of the biggest reasons why this video / campaign failed.)

MESSAGE > What your audience should take away? And from Message a CALL TO ACTION should be derived. (Very confused message and strange Call to Action).

If these steps were followed and just common sense used, then video or better to say videos (I’ll explain soon) will look completely different. I absolutely agree with Ms Sarah Henderson, Federal member for Corangamite that said:

Her idea of a competition to promote the region using videos submitted by the public is much better then what Mr Lyons and Mr Grant delivered.

To make thing even more bizzare, Mayor Darryn Lyons, in his response said: “Robot Army (video production company behind the video) are a great bunch of kids and they asked me to be in this, I said yes, because I always do what I can to help Geelong.” What!?

Is he hiding behind the “great bunch of kids” now, or he’s just telling us with “Mayor out of the box” (in his own words) – we get Strategy out Through The Window?

Is that a strategy? Can Mayor explain to us, how someone walks into the Mayor’s office and ask for $37,000 project? And finally; was this a project of City of Greater Geelong and Tourism Greater Geelong and The Bellarine or project by “bunch of kids”.

Mr Roger Grant also mentioned when defending this video, a research that lead them in developing this video. I’d like to see connection between that research and the strategy for the video. He also constantly refers to number of views the video is projected to get and how great that is. Who ever is a little bit longer involved with video marketing, knows that view count is not be all and end all in video marketing. It can’t it be a purpose for itself as a final goal of any serious video marketing campaign. To base your KPI solely on number of views is just not good enough. What about number of leads, click through rate and other parameters?

The only way a number of views can be crucial is, if the objective of this video was to promote and raise the profile of Mr Lyons as Mayor of Geelong. Like with any typical stunt from a celebrities where any publicity is good publicity, and “look 1 mil people saw my crazy video” can only be beneficial to celebrities like Miley Cirus and many others, the same rule doesn’t apply to company and organisation brands.

Only in that case we can say, yes, mission accomplished, huge exposure, I’ll book more for next concert or whatever. The video is geared towards the same audience, audience that prefers stunts over substance and it is not a surprise that it will reach big numbers. My teenage son loves the video, he also loves this video below (and it’s nothing wrong with that, we were all teenagers and most of us liked that “cool” sort of stuff), created by another “great bunch of kids” from Geelong too. Watch: 50,000 views! (first 2 minutes will do 🙂

It Happened Before

To prove that number of views is not enough to measure a success of any serious video marketing campaign we can also have a look at this campaign by the same stars, Mr Lyons and Mr Grant and filmed with the same crew. The aim of this campaign was to make people in Geelong and region to vote for Geelong as a host for this year’s Social Media Tourism Symposium. So we had again here Mayor Lyons in a major role, we all remember those scenes (even if I want to erase them 🙂 from the pool, Mr Grant had a picture taken half naked for newspapers, and what happened?

A message and a call to action, someway along the way were lost and in spite of huge number of views the goal wasn’t achieved. I don’t know how hard it was to win against a place like Barossa and how this team got another chance to get it wrong, I’m not sure. I ask myself, why I didn’t say anything back then?

5 Main Reasons Why #GeelongReinvented Video Project Failed

1 – Complete lack of Strategy

2 – Failure to define Target Audience

3 – Decision to deliver Stunt rather than Substance

4 – Confused message

5 – Use of words (s—-y ho—w) and imagery that divided community, only 39% of people think that this video will bring more tourists to Geelong (Geelong Advertiser poll)

Reasons #1 and #3 have already been discussed above. Reason #5 is self explanatory, why would you re-introduce those two words in a debate if you want to do better for your Geelong and the region? Have they been aware of the fact that these two words will be now dominating the blogosphere and poisoning cyberspace around brand Geelong and brand Tourism Geelong and the Bellarine for a long time including all zombie references?

#2 Failure to define Target Audience. This is a big one.

I’m really surprised that in today’s day and age where brands are more and more embracing Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing and use of content in SEO that anyone would attempt to approach this project with one-video solution!?

If there was any seriuos attempt made to define the target audience then it’d be obvious that there are many different audience groups and that it’d be rather impossible to target them with one video and one message. Why so high production value, when trends in video, especially video intended for web, for online delivery is shifting strongly towards lower production value and storytelling. How much was wasted only on make up and costumes?

Why not 10 videos x $3,700 instead of one video of $37,000?

You could easily identify 10 different target audiences (hikers, surfers, cyclists, food & wine lovers, fishing enthusiasts, young families, grey nomads, motorists, history trail lovers, art lovers…) and then target each of those groups with a dedicated video.

Then you can spread that content over 10 months for example, and release video by video at the time most appropriate for that group.

#4 Confused message(s)

This one is caused directly as a consequence from #2, Failure to identify Target Audience(s). Too many different and often conflicting messages as a result of trying to cram too much in one video. It should be One Video – One Target Audience – One Message.

First of all, what’s with the Call To Action – “… come to Geelong and the Bellarine and star in your own blockbuster” (??) Did you also notice that last image in the video was “Geelong and the Bellarine” shown in “Hollywood Hill Letters”?

Who switched the scripts?

I know that there was a lot of talks over past few years about Geelong trying to attract Hollywood dollars, trying to get international movie producers to come and shoot their movies here. So, was this an attempt to make both tourism video and this “video pitch to Hollywood” into one? Or, did someone switch the scripts somewhere half way into the production process? Maybe there was even a script or a brief from earlier, then someone borrowed that idea, but then forgot that was a different brief, different industry? Mayor himself is mentioning a “taste of Hollywood” in his response to critics… I don’t know, just too many unanswered questions.

I’m also baffled by the lack of optimisation and call to action in video and on YouTube watch page. First of all, in video, there is no website address to accompany that weird call to action. Do viewers really know what to do after watching the video?

Standard procedure is that first line in description box is where you put a clickable website address where you want your viewers to go to in case they find you on You Tube and many will. There is a producer’s website address further below in description box, but it is not clickable.

I just can’t understand how an organisation (or a brand) like Tourism Geelong and and Bellarine, or any other serious brand can neglect this crucial step: what are viewers are going to do after watching the video, how are you going to benefit from all these views if you don’t optimise your video and include next step (website address at least)?

Complete optimisation on videos’s You Tube Watch Page page is shambolic, but that’s a topic for a completely new blog post.

In closing, as I was searching online for articles about this sad story, I accidentally came across this Facebook page and this Zombie Apocalypse Survival Course from Adelaide (see the image below), they liked it. How could I forget to put them on the target audience list…

What to say at the end, maybe just to use the call to action from the video: “Star in your own blockbuster”Mr Mayor! If you really wanted a major role, to promote yourself as a Mayor, red carpet and all shebang, you should have payed for it with you own money.

I’m also inviting everyone to say something when you see mediocre performance in your industry, it is not about “being negative”, it is about getting better, contribute with what’s your expertise because we cannot allow such costly mistakes.

It is second in our series of 7 videos produced for Gateways, and during that time we were privileged to meet their volunteers and employees and see first hand what great contribution their volunteers make to the most needy in our society.

Gateways Support Services is a responsive community organisation that empowers and supports children and adults who have a disability/additional need and their families.

The release coincides with National Volunteer Week (13th to 19th May) and this is our small contribution to participate in celebrating Australian volunteers.

Help us say “THANKS A MILLION” to Australian volunteers with sharing this video.

National Volunteer Week (NVW2013) is Australias largest celebration of volunteers and volunteerism. Today there are over 6 million (ABS 2010b) people volunteering annually in Australia, representing 36% of the adult population. Volunteering Australia along with its state and territory network recognises the valuable contribution each individual provides by offering their time, skills and passion, continuing to demonstrate Australias proud culture of giving.